Facebook Censorship, When Social Networks Block the Sharing of Links (or Worse)

Social networking is booming and millions of people have signed up for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, etc. Using those services, people are continually posting updates, tweeting, liking, checking in, and {enter new buzz term here.} It makes sense. Social networks provide an incredible way to connect with family, friends, colleagues, and others in your industry.

When used correctly, social media can definitely give you a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. But when you take a deeper look, are the social networks really that nice? Who is really in control of your accounts, what are the social networks monitoring, and can you potentially lose the accounts that you’ve worked so hard to build?

-What can happen to your digital equity? -

Facebook Censored a Link I Was Trying to Share
If you follow me on Twitter, then you know that I like to share links to valuable articles and posts. For example, I often tweet about the latest news in Search, Social Media, Analytics, Technology, etc. A few weeks ago, one such link came across Tweetdeck. It was about Facebook apparently shutting down a page that had built up 47,000 fans. The problem had to do with the page in question using a vanity URL with the word Realtor in it (SocialRealtors), which is trademarked by The National Association of Realtors. Jonathan Rivera, the person that had set up the page, obviously worked his tail off building up a following (47K strong), and in the blink of an eye, the page was shut down. That’s disturbing enough, but what happened next is equally as disturbing to me.

Note: The page was finally reinstated and now uses a vanity URL that doesn’t cause any problems trademark-wise. That said, it’s still shocking to know that a social network could crush everything you’ve built up in mere seconds.

On July 15th, I tweeted the article on Twitter and then headed to Facebook to share the link with my friends. I don’t share all of the links on Facebook that I tweet, but this one seemed important. I think too many people frolic around Facebook without understanding the privacy issues involved, the targeting capabilities of Facebook Ads, the ownership of what’s posted, etc. So, I opened up Facebook like I typically do, and started to post my update. I clicked “Attach: Link” and then pasted the link to the post I just read on techsavvyagent.com. When I clicked “Apply”, an error message popped up saying that “Something went wrong. We’re working on getting it fixed as soon as we can.”

OK, I was cool with that. Technology can be glitchy sometimes. So, I waited a few minutes and then tried again. The same message popped up. Huh? So, I took another URL unrelated to the Facebook page that was removed and it went through just fine. Then I immediately tried to share the original article again (about Facebook shutting down the page), and once again, the error message popped up.

Facebook, are you serious? Are you censoring the links I share and trying to make it look like there’s an error? I’d respect Facebook more if it just said, “That link has been flagged as inappropriate based on an internal investigation of the page in question.” At least that would be partly true. To be clear, I totally understand that in certain situations, Facebook should take action. For example, if someone is breaking the law, attacking another user, or someone’s updates are completely offensive. But the idea that Facebook might be censoring links because it doesn’t want certain articles to be shared is ridiculous. By the way, I also asked my wife to try and post the link, and she couldn’t either. I wanted to make sure this was more than an isolated issue.

For almost an entire week, I could not post the link. The error message was coming up as recently as yesterday morning. Today, however, I could post the link. It’s the first time since July 15th that I’ve been able to share that post on Facebook. Why did this happen, how come I can now post the link, why did it take almost exactly one week? I have no idea, but I’m still not happy that Facebook was stopping the link from being shared…

How Widespread Is Facebook Censoring?
So of course the next question that came to mind was, “How widespread is the censoring of links or other activities on Facebook?” And to take it even further, is Facebook using “error messages” as a tactic for making users believe that they aren’t being censored? Unfortunately, I don’t have answers to these questions (yet). A quick search on Google for Facebook censorship yields many articles about Facebook censoring links or groups or updates, so this is nothing new for the social network with close to 500 million members.

I think it’s important to address this topic now. As technology advances, we’ll be dealing with more and more connectivity (on both a technology and a personal level.) Layered on top of that connectivity are serious privacy issues, censorship issues, and a growing concern about “what crosses the line?” To me, Facebook is crossing the line if they are censoring links like the one I tried to share.

Digital Equity and Account Ownership
I wrote a post in 2009 that was titled, Lawyers, Guns, and Twitter – Who Owns Your Twitter Account, which addressed the sticky topic of Twitter account ownership. The post seemed to strike a nerve with Twitter users and executives, since there wasn’t a clear answer. One of the comments was by Steve Plunkett, someone I greatly respect in the SEO community. You can read his entire comment on the post itself, but his point was that none of us “own” our social media accounts. The social networks do. I think his point never meant more than the second I realized that Facebook was censoring my links. Steve is right and the situation I experienced supports his view. Not only was Facebook inhibiting me from sharing a link, but that link was about another person whose page of 47K fans was shut down without any notice. So, you had two examples of how a social network had the ultimate control.

This is part of the reason that I explain to new clients that although social media can be incredibly powerful, they should first invest in their own site, blogs, etc. They shouldn’t simply rely on their social media accounts without having a solid strategy for building up power in their own assets. You own your domain name, you own your website, and you own your content and blog posts. In addition, if you do the right things, your assets can build up search power, traffic, subscribers, customers, etc. (AKA digital equity). For the most part, nobody can take that away from you. Of course, Google can strip your SEO power if they believe you broke the rules, but you get the picture. You have much greater control than you do on social networks (where the socnets are clearly in control…more than you think).

Think about this for a second. Imagine you built up 4500 fans on Facebook and 8000 followers on Twitter only to wake up one morning and find out that both social networks shut down your accounts. You would be left with nothing. Don’t let this happen to you. Make sure you also focus on your own assets (your sites, blogs, content, etc.) Stay in control of as many assets as you can, and build your digital equity. Social media will definitely be part of the equation, but don’t let it be the only part. You can ask Jonathan Rivera about how he would do things differently after his page was shut down (even though it has been reinstated).

Final Thoughts About Social Censorship
As you can probably tell, I believe this topic is extremely important. What happened on Facebook that day disturbed me on several levels. First, Facebook shut down a page with 47,000 fans, with no warning. Second, Facebook was censoring my links about that happening. Third, Facebook showed an error message versus telling the truth about what it was doing. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like social networks telling me what I can share, while also having the ability to strip away hard-earned digital equity in a flash. That’s part of the reason I’ve been blogging for years.

Think about that the next time you feel all warm and fuzzy inside when sharing the photos of your kids…

GG